Planting Time?

February 11th isn't an odd time for snow...even here, but this winter is a bit odd in that it is cold almost all of the time. We are not getting the "warm spells" in between the cold.

And wet. We are living on an island in a swamp right now. Squishy ground everywhere...when it isn't frozen hard.

We are supposed tp be planting stuff now for our spring gardens...I am ready for spring temps.

UPDATE. March 1: We had a total of nearly a foot of snow in February...A FOOT!!! We don't get a foot of snow here. What the heck was that? ANd here on March 1, no springy-looking beautiful blue skies, just a cold rain and a threat of it changing to snow before it leaves us.

Winter Weather

I am looking back on my notes from last winter - used for things like success/failure of plantings, time referencing (like..."oh yeah, I remember that 80 degree February day") and such. This time last year, at my location on this planet, we were experiencing regularly days of 70 or higher. And, due to that, I was already sticking seeds, and transplants into the ground for my spring garden.

This year, a different story. It seems since the mid-portion of September 2009, that we have had nothing but a steady cool and wet. I can't remember a past time with this many days of 10 degrees or even 20 degrees, or more, below the "normal" expected temperature.

Right now, we should be about 60 to 61 degrees for daytime highs. It has been struggling most days to get 40 degrees. And the nights - cold. Temps in the mid to low 20's regularly, and that is cold...for here anyway.

So, my spring plantings are not happening yet. And the weather forecast looks like it may not happen for the foreseeable future. Snow and cold in the immediate forecast followed by the extended outlook for the spring months of below normal temps and above average precipitation.

I wish it'd save some of this for July and August.

No more seeds already...

I ordered more seeds - after I said to myself we had more than enough. But you look through the catalogs and see stuff you just have to try.

So, I ordered more.

From one catalog I ordered three more pepper varieties. Goliath Griller Hybrid, Chichimeca Hybrid and NuMex Sunrise. And three more tomatoes. Red Alert (container-sized plants), Micro Tom Hybrid (also a small plant for containers) and First Light hybrid.

And from another catalog I ordered Red Ace beets, Rubicon cabbage (Napa type), Clio dandelion, Purple Top White Globe turnips and several types of seeds for sprouting...and a seed sprouter kit.

Hope I can find a home for everything I am wanting to plant this spring.

This winters weather

Goofy. It was a cool wet fall here in Texas. A good fall for getting a fall harvest of several things...like broccoli and greens.

Now, since the first part of December, it has decided it really wants to be winter. Cold front after cold front pushing our lows lower that I prefer. We have already had several nights into the low 20's - which is darned cold for here. And the grandaddy cold front hit today. The next three nights, and days, will be the coldest in a decade or more, so they say. Nighttime lows into the low teens. Even plants in the greenhouse, with its small heater, have been nipped by overnight lows falling below freezing inside the greenhouse.

My greens and lettuces have been pretty much destroyed. And the forecast doesn't really look good for the next couple of weeks, or months if you look into the three month picture. El nino is having its way with us this winter.

Hopefully this "stupid cold" spell will end soon and we can at least attempt again to have an early jump on spring gardening.

It's Winter Seed Ordering Time!

You know you are a gardener when...."THE NEW SEED CATALOGS ARE IN!!!".

Seed ordering is one of the fun things about this time of year, for a gardener anyway. I have received catalogs from several of the seed companies now and have already placed an order for some seeds that will need to be started next month for transplanting into the garden in late winter and into early spring.

Though I have plenty of seed leftovers from last years purchases and from my own seed harvesting, I have to try a few new items.

So far, I have ordered:

Mei Qing Choi - a bok choi green
Sahuaro - a hot pepper
Serrano del Sol - a serrano pepper
El Jefe - a jalapeno variety
Brandywine - heirloom tomato
Golden Sweet - a cherry tomato
Olivade - a Roma-like tomato for sauces
Black Seeded Simpson - a leaf lettuce
and another variety pack of lettuces

The peppers and tomatoes will get an early start in the greenhouse, and transplanted into gallon containers after getting a good start. We will grow them to a decent size in the greenhouse, or out as conditions warrant, before setting them out. Last year doing it this way, and waiting until we were pretty confident that the last freeze was past, we had a really good early production of tomatoes when no one else was harvesting any, or had lost plants to late freezes.

Some Fall Harvest

So far the fall harvest has been decent, especially for greens. And now, we are getting to harvest some of my favorites - broccoli and sweet potatoes. My experience for growing spring broccoli was not too good, so this gives me some encouragement that I can indeed grow a decent broccoli.

The piece of broccoli in the photo is the best that I have harvested thus far. For scale, the knife shown is about 7 inches in length, so the broccoli is a nice large-sized head.

The sweet potatoes are also some "jumbos". I haven't grown them before and didn't know when to harvest. Everything I had read had indicated to wait until a frost and the leaves turning brown. Well, we really haven't had a killing frost yet, and are about two weeks beyond our normal first freeze...so I dug them up anyway. All of the rain that we have been getting appears to have taken a bit of toll on the crop. Several large potatoes were split wide open...I assume form the excessive moisture (like a tomato does).

Artichokes are in the ground

I started some artichokes from seed back in the first part of August. I got some of them into the ground a week or so ago. They seem to be establishing themselves quite nicely now. We have had good rains and cool temperatures for the last month.

I am also trying to keep two of the plants in one gallon containers over the winter, to be planted into the ground in late winter or early spring. These two will probably not produce the first year, but, hopefully, will be robust the second spring.